Lexical Length of English Dentistry-Implantolоgy Terms

Abstract

The article focuses on the analysis of the lexical length of English dentistry-implantology terms. Over the past decades, the term as a linguistic phenomenon has been a chief focus of scholars not only in the field of terminology, but also in general linguistics (M.Castellvi; R.Köhler; G.Altman). Despite a considerable number of studies on scientific terminology, certain term systems still remain unresearched, in particular the English terminology of dentistry-implantology. In this context, the study of the structural characteristics of English-language terms in the field of dentistry-implantology is relevant. The goal of the research is to elucidate the structural characteristics of the English terms in the field of dentistry-implantology. The object is the English intra-domain terms of dentistry-implantology. The subject of the study is the lexical length of English terms in the field of dentistry-implantology. Under the term “a lexical length” the number of root morphemes of full-meaning words is meant. In our study, a sample of English language special intra-domain terms in the field of dentistry-implantology was compiled. The English terminology of dentistry-implantology consists of one-component and multi-component terms. One-component terms include one root morpheme of a full-meaning word. One-component terms include 48 intra-domain terms (which makes up 16.7% of the total number of terms, respectively). One-component terms also include abbreviation terms. Multicomponent terms include two or more root morphemes of full-meaning words in their structure. The characteristics of multi-component terms include the part of speech model, which determines the structure of a linguistic unit. There is a correlation between the part of speech model and the term formation type. In our sample, 224 multi-component terms (which have two or more root morphemes) were recorded, which is 78.3%. This percentage characterizes the general tendency of modern terminology, which consists in the use of complex syntactic units. Terms with longer lexical and graphic lengths have greater opportunities for nomination of complex concepts of English dentistry-implantology terminology. That is why, they are predominant. However, these multicomponent terms have a lower absolute frequency according to the law of economy of speech efforts.